Holding On For Your Call
by seastarved
Summary: A little fic because I have feelings about them growing old together. Inspired by the Underworld phone line in 5x16 and set in some happily ever after where Killian and Emma have the time to build their lives together.
_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

* * *

 _By all rights, he's lived longer than any man should be allowed to live. He's seen and experienced things that would make an ordinary man lose himself. He's seen magic and madness, the deepest, brightest colours in this world and the next. He has travelled to a thousand shores and lived through at least three separate lifetimes._

 _But, his heart had never known the joy he feels when he sees this. Something so gloriously, wonderfully mundane. Something so normal, so regular, so inane._

 _It happens like this._

 _It is a chilly winter morning when they make their way to Granny's just as they do each day for breakfast and coffee. His arm is around her, her head on his shoulder, their breath coming out in little puffs of steam that disperse in the cold air. She's got her little wooden hat pulled over her ears and her arms tight around him as she moves closer and closer to his warmth and he feels he has never been more content in his hundreds of years._

 _He pulls away for a moment, to press a kiss to her temple when he sees it. A tiny shimmer of silver in the swathes of the gold of her hair. His heart stutters in his chest and he freezes, pulling her backwards with his sudden stop._

 _"Killian, what—?"_

 _He does not answer her, all his words lost to him all at once. So, he gently pulls her closer and pulls her beanie off her head, her hair standing up in disarray at his movement, her eyebrows high on her head as she looks at him, bemused._

 _"Hey, what's up? Are you ok?"_

 _Her hands come up to cup his cheeks and that's when he realises that he's been gaping at her with his mouth opened in wonder. He closes it immediately, a soft chuckle escaping him as he shakes his head slightly and comes back to himself. His fingers find that little shimmer of silver again and he finally meets her eyes, his body feeling like it is glowing with happiness._

 _"Nothing, darling. Absolutely nothing."_

 _And he kisses her. He kisses her for all years they've spent together, for all the years that lie ahead_

* * *

"Good morning, Grumpy! How are you today?"

The man turns to Killian with bleary eyes and a frown on his face, his hand already reaching for the coffee in Killian's hand.

"M'alright mate. I don't know how you're so chipper this early in the morning at your age. Five hundred something now, wasn't it?"

Killian hands the man his coffee and takes his place behind him in the queue that is already two blocks long at seven in the morning. He and Grumpy had been reluctant acquaintances when he had first stepped in here but the day after Killian had told him that there was a way to talk to people who were still alive, Grumpy had begun to tag along on Killian's early morning excursions.

And well, proximity and loneliness can lead to the unlikeliest of friendships.

"Oh but you wound me! I'm not a day over four hundred and five!"

"Sure you are," he chuckles before turning away, "the queue is so long today, I wonder what it is."

"A lot more people missing the people they love, I suppose."

Killian's voice loses its bounce as he looks down to the end of the line where a young boy walks into the booth, standing on his toes to reach the phone. And though he has been here long enough to see this before, his heart still aches to see someone so young find their way here.

He takes another sip of his coffee and waits his turn.

* * *

 _The stories that make up his life could fill a book._

 _They would enthral you with the beauty contained within their pages. They would terrify you with the incredible depths of cruelty that man can impose on man. They would make you laugh with joy, cry a thousand tears and want to hold the man who has been through it all. But despite all the magic and terrible things he has lived through, he has never seen this. He has never stayed somewhere long enough, never found home for long enough to truly see time pass._

 _He has known men who have changed their hearts, he has known people who had traded away their souls. He has known his own heart to be changed. He has known hers._

 _But, he has not_ ** _seen_ **_it happen, he has not felt it, he has not touched it. Three hundred years on Pan's island, his heart changed irrevocably but his countenance the same. Twenty eight years frozen in time, waiting for a chance at revenge._

 _(No, no.)_

 _(Waiting for her.)_

 _Not until that first sign of her hair turning silver had it occurred to him that they were about to have this, that he would be able to grow old by her side._

 _And so, as time passes, to Killian's great joy, their bodies slowly begin to change._

 _He realises that his eyesight is weaker on a clear morning in Spring when he can no longer see the time on the clock tower from the Jolly's prow. He bounds home to tell Emma about it, his voice an excited jumble of words as he speaks. She only looks at him with her eyes sparkling with affection, her fingers gentle on his cheek when she tells him that it's time they looked at some glasses for him._

 _They pick out a pair of sleek black frames for him. They catch the light in the afternoon when he looks at himself in the glass of the shop across from Granny's, his reflection juxtaposed against the soft pink dress that is displayed in the window. He feels a little like a stranger in his body, the new weight strange on his face, the frames itching behind his ears, the bridge pinching at his nose._

 _"You look good, I promise."_

 _The reflection changes to accommodate Emma's head peering over his shoulder, her arms coming around his waist._

 _"Truly, love?"_

 _His distress must be palpable and, apparently, amusing because her laugh is loud and free, her head thrown back and if wearing these things can make her laugh like that then he might be persuaded to keep them._

 _But it is later that night, when she pants into his ear how sexy he looks, how they bring_ _out his "geeky" side (whatever the devil that means), that he decides to keep them._

* * *

He finally gets his turn at the phone after his coffee is gone and he has learned the life of the scared, young woman who had walked behind him.

The underworld is easier to deal with the second time around, he finds. It helps that the place is kinder to the souls who reside here now, the king no longer as vindictive and cruel as he used to be. But they are still lonely souls, wandering the in between waiting to finish what they hadn't been able to on their time on earth. He tries to ease as many of them as he can, tries helping them find their way, tries helping them accept themselves so that they may move on.

They trust him. Even as his eyes are just as sharp as they used to be, they are older and kinder now. His body now meant for warmth and comfort rather than a fight. His soul comfortable and content even as he waits for his own unfinished business.

The phone is familiar to his fingers now, his hook holding the door closed as he puts it to his ear.

"Hello love. I've missed you today."

* * *

 _It is a lazy Saturday afternoon in summer when their children are blessedly away for the day when he finds that falling asleep in her arms, their bodies tangled, is all that they can manage. Despite their plans to spend all day in bed as they had done in their youth, as Killian had promised in dirty whispers the night before. Even as their hearts beat as strongly for each other as they have always done, their bodies are softer with their wanting. It not the sharp and quick blaze of before but a slow, steady flame that licks at their toes and warms them to their bones._

 _"We've got to have more than_ ** _one_ **_in us right? Killian," she shakes him awake, his head already resting on her shoulder, his eyes heavy with sleep and satisfaction. "Killian, wake up, come on."_

 _His voice is heavy, slurred as he replies,"Darling, we have two teenagers and a boy in college," he swallows, grunting softly as he moves deeper under the covers, arms around her waist pulling her closer, "and god I love you, but we deserve the sleep."_

 _She hits his head with a pillow and collapses into a fit of giggles as he growls, his eyes suddenly wide open. He straddles her, intent on tickling her but they both find themselves panting and giving up in a few minutes, his head falling to her heaving chest and pressing a kiss to the middle of it._

 _"You're right. Come here," she pulls him by his shoulder and turns so he's on his side, their legs a mess, tangled with their blankets, their faces an inch apart._

 _"We're getting old," she whispers._

 _"Aye," he moves just a little closer, "but we're doing it together."_

* * *

"Smee found me yesterday and he told me that you had said hello. Darling, I cannot tell you how my heart leaped in joy knowing that you hear me."

Even though he has done this everyday for a year now, he still cannot bring himself to truly believe that she hears him. Sometimes he lies awake at night, in their bed in this world, their house only his now and colder and emptier without her. He wonders if she thinks he'd left her, wondering if she knows that he loves her still. He wonders if she misses him too terribly. He wishes he could hold her. He wonders if his voice soothes her or torments her. He wonders.

But it matters not what fears plague his night because he is here every morning regardless.

"I hope the children are doing well. I cannot believe my sweet girl is thirty now. Darling, she is older than you were when we met! I never thought that I would see the day that I would have children, let alone that my children would have children."

He pauses, his throat suddenly too thick to continue.

"Wish her a happy birthday from me, would you? And tell her that no matter how old she gets, she'll always be my little girl."

A pause, a breath.

"I love you so and I am so sorry to have left you," he says on a whisper, just as he does everyday. He always ends their calls telling her this and telling her to stay strong and live, that he would wait for her forever but today feels different. Just as he had realised that it has been a year and two days since he had died, his heart had ached with wanting. It has been far too long without her, without her warmth, without her strength, without her kiss, without her touch.

So today he says, even as he knows how it sounds, he tells her.

"Sometimes I wish you were here, my love. It is terribly selfish of me, I know but I am so lonely without you."

His forehead falls against the wall behind the phone and his tears finally fall.

* * *

 _It is moonlit night in autumn when she kisses the soft lines at the corner of his mouth, marks etched on to his face that talks of all the smiles he has smiled with her. She drags her thumbs down the ones under his eyes and he only smiles again when she presses a soft kiss to his cheek before turning back to the people who had gathered to watch them reaffirm their love to one another. Their parents, their children, their children's children and their friends all here to stand with them fifty years after the first time._

 _"Do you take this man—"_

 _"I do," she interrupts Henry before he can finish, her grin a wide toothy thing even after all these years. Henry grins back, his own smile a mirror of hers._

 _"Killian Jones, do you—"_

 _"I do. For the rest of our days and every moment after."_

 _His eyes do not leave her, his eyes tracing every line, every fold of her skin that tells their story. His eyes never leave hers, their emerald depths shining with all the knowledge of their shared history._

 _Henry clears his throat and their family laughs._

 _"Ok, you can stare at each other later. You may now kiss the bride."_

* * *

There is a knock on the glass behind him, an urgent rapping that pulls him out of his reverie. He makes a quick swipe at his cheeks and stands straight.

"Just a minute, mate. I'm almost done."

He puts the phone to his ear again as begins to speak, his mouth opening to say something when the rapping starts again.

"Bloody hell, a _minute_ mate," he snaps back at whoever is disturbing him, his back still to them as he begins to speak again.

"I have to go now, love. I—"

The rapping gets louder, the knocks closer together now, even more urgent than before. He whips around to shout at whoever was this impatient to get at the booth.

The words die on his lips and the handset falls from his hand when he sees her.

"About time!" she says, opening the booth to pull him out. He is too dumbstruck to protest but as soon as her hand touches his, as soon as they are outside, as soon as she smiles at him, her eyes as green as the day he had left her, he is lost. He pulls her into him, his arms around her waist, his face in her shoulder.

"Oh Killian, I missed you so much."

* * *

 _It is a moonless midsummer's night when he goes._

 _His fingers intertwined with hers, her name on his lips._

 _It is quiet and it is deafening all at once, her soft sobs and Henry's mumbles of reassurance the only sounds in the room._

* * *

"I heard you every night. At first I thought I was going crazy, you know being as old as a tree and all but then I remembered the story!"

They lie together in their bed, legs entwined and fingers clasped, as close as they can. They had fallen into bed immediately, their kisses frantic, their tears staining each other's cheeks but after, they had lain quietly, and she had let him learn her again. He had traced all the new lines on her face, the new scars.

 _("Did you burn yourself again?" he says as he softly touches the new mark by her elbow._

 _"Well, you weren't around to—" her voice falls away even as she smiles at him, her mouth opening to continue but he cuts her off with a kiss, his lips saying all things he didn't have words for anymore.)_

They speak in whispers, neither unwilling to break their sweet, fragile cocoon of silence.

"Hearing your voice was the only thing that kept me going sometimes," her fingers trace the old scar on his cheek, falling then to take his hook, revisiting all her favourite places that made her feel like home.

"I missed you too, Emma," he pulls his hook up and presses a kiss to her knuckles, "Every day."

Her eyes are fixed on his hook, her fingers still wrapped around it even as her other hand remains lost deep in his hair.

"You look younger than me now. That's unfair, You're like five hundred or something," her eyes meet his and even though there is a shadow of a jest in her voice, he hears the pain still.

"Oh darling but I don't look a day over a hundred and twenty, do I?" he pouts at her, sticking out his lower lip even as his own eyes begin to shine in a mirror to hers. She kisses him then, pulls his lower lip into her mouth for a long moment, breathing him in. When they pull apart, he compensates by pulling her closer by her waist.

Their eyes shut, foreheads pressed together, he whispers the question that's been plaguing him since he'd first seen her, "How did you—?"

He doesn't even get through it, his hand tightening around her waist as though both afraid to hear the answer and afraid to let her go.

"Shh, it was easy. I didn't feel a thing and I got to spend my last days with everyone I loved around me."

He relaxes just a touch, his body sagging in relief as she presses a soothing kiss to his neck before pressing her forehead there and holding him closer.

"When I first realised you were here, I wondered for months what possible unfinished business you could still have and—"

Her voice falls away into another kiss and he presses one in reply to her temple, his hook making gentle strokes up and down her back now. His voice is gruff as he answers, "I was waiting for you."

"I know."

* * *

It a quiet day in the underworld when they both pass, hands held and smiles on their faces as they walk into the light.

And as they do, the years melt away from them, their bodies back to the way they had been when they had first met and though Killian feels a twinge of sadness losing the evidence of their life, he realises that all this means, is that they get to do it all over again.


End file.
